


A Burning Sun

by Lyssandra_Med



Series: One-Shot [51]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Demons, Blood Magic, F/F, Praise Be to Doc, Ritual Magic, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:40:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24112192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyssandra_Med/pseuds/Lyssandra_Med
Summary: She would be the one who was left to remember.The last to think they could save it, against all odds.The last to think they could save it, even when it hadn’t wanted to be saved.The last to think they could save it, three children with hearts drowned in hope.But Bellatrix wants her thinking different things.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Bellatrix Black Lestrange
Series: One-Shot [51]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1429282
Comments: 8
Kudos: 54





	A Burning Sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [drD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drD/gifts), [beforeyouspeak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beforeyouspeak/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Reign Down](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7901920) by [drD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drD/pseuds/drD). 
  * Inspired by [Silver Nucleus](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22092676) by [drD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drD/pseuds/drD). 



> Mildly edited in an effort to hurry up and post because it's been a while since I dropped anything here.

She would be the one who was left to remember. 

She had decided on that and internalized the reasoning before the final body crashed against the ground. She would remember all of their faces and all of their voices, the terrible abomination that their optimism had become in the final hours. That twisted little thing that said,  _ ‘We can do this,’ _ even when all was already lost. That false hope had carried them forward and pushed her to the side, the only one left to think about their late nights spent beneath the stars and twinkling smiles that promised they could save the world.

They could save it, against all odds.

They could save it, even when it hadn’t wanted to be saved.

They could save it, three children with hearts drowned in hope.

And the worst part of it all? It could have worked. It  _ should _ have worked. Perhaps, were the world a more sane place that ran on optimism and dreams, it had. But here in this one it had failed.  _ They _ had failed. Power and heritage had come out above all the rest, and their Light had sputtered into death. So far as she could tell there was no one left to commiserate with her. No one who could recall the details of that final battle nor anyone who could tell her it was alright. 

No one to tell her that she had tried and that was what really counted. 

Their words might not have even mattered, she was hardly fit enough to remember the days that passed her by to say anything of learning to accept forgiveness for her failure. Azkaban did that to people. It snapped their minds and made all the memories worse. Tinged them, filmed them with smoke and haze that was colder than her heart.

Still she persevered, remembered what she could. She had to. If she were to wake up one day and forget all of their faces, their hopes and dreams, then what was the point of it all except to prove out the futility of their actions. If she couldn’t recall their last goodbye or the few precious moments where the fate of the world had remained in flux then what good was she to anyone, much less the dead? What  _ use _ was she, in this new and broken world, if not to be the focal point for all their shared pain?

But this pain _ hurt, _ and for the life of her she could not devise a way to make it better.

She should have been able to, had always been called the brains of their little operation, the driver behind each of Harry’s undoubtedly insane stunts. He had been filled with a desire to do good, driven to perform his best despite limited knowledge or dangerous situations. So she had buffeted his lack of knowledge with her own, had spent hours and nights and days locked in thought to save him, them, everyone. Ron had been filled with brave ignorance, believing himself to be strong enough for everything even when it terrified him, even when others proclaimed Harry as all they needed. She had been there as much as she could, buoying his mood when necessary and providing what little she could in the manner of a shoulder to lean on.

It hadn’t been enough but the effort had been worth it, and she wouldn’t trade the memories for anything except their revival.

Even if the memories could sometimes be terrifying. Even if  _ she _ had ended up just a bit terrified, just a bit unhinged amid the closing. But she had been a little unhinged even at the beginning of it all.  _ Normal _ people weren’t ones to set their teachers on fire after all.  _ Normal _ people didn’t confront their fear of the encroaching darkness by suffusing themselves with it. They would run into the Light, bathe in the Sun and proclaim it as their champion. They  _ basked _ beneath that glow, hid as though the night would never come.

She hadn’t. And maybe that had been their downfall, the twisting of their faces when they realized what she had sunk to but it didn’t matter. It bought them more days, weeks, months that they could try to fix it all.

But still they had failed, and now her worst fears were a constant reality that had been helped and buttressed by a twisting sort of awareness that was assuredly anything but healthy. Late nights to stave off the nightmares, early mornings to move and hide. Always on the run, always looking over her shoulder, always fighting back the urge to raze it to the ground and burn herself as well. Odd jobs that never paid enough and the shifting story of a Half-blooded orphan child that hadn’t had parents in ages. No one to remember her, no one left to care. A half-truth if only for the half of it that represented her abandonment.

She had no way of finding  _ them  _ after all, and leaving this blasted country was such a useless wish that it might as well have not existed. There was no way to leave without alerting masses of Snatchers. All of the ways out -  _ sky, Portkey, Apparition, Muggle _ \- all of it blocked off. 

She was left with nothing to do except stay and hope she wasn’t caught. Stay alive, say sane, stay as ready and defensive as she could be.

Stay and remember, if only because the memories made the pain just a little more bearable.

She held no illusions about her safety in this new world. She would be caught out eventually and then likely be killed without a second thought. It was a gruesome fear but a realistic one, one that let her have the freedom to plan and prepare as if she were safe and sound. The only day to live for was the next, and the lessening pressure of saving the world was a godsend in that respect. 

Some day. Not today though. Today wasn’t safe, and she was nowhere near sound. She was tied up and trussed like some offering to a dark god, biting at the hemp cord in her mouth and gagging on the splinters of fibre. The rigging was impromptu and too tight against her body, the result of a rather hasty spell that had been unleashed in fear and anger. The material was biting into her skin with no remorse, bleeding her where it compressed and stretching pain beneath her mind. 

The only real comfort left to her was the slowly spreading numbness in her limbs and the thought that maybe it would all be over soon. Nerves were cut off, blood choked down, the positioning a lean comfort but one that made the prospect of meeting her end a little bit easier. She would take what she could get. It wasn’t as if she had any choice in the matter and none of her defences had managed to save her, no plans were left to pull her from this. 

The proprietor of the Inn had burst through her door not three minutes earlier with red-robed Aurors on his heels. One of them was downed by the trap laid into the ceiling, one sucked into a swirling nothingness that she had prepared the night before, and the other lost a leg for his efforts. But the rest had pushed through. Wands too fast and faces filled with glee. Eyes that beat fury and hate into her skin. 

_ How _ they had found her didn’t matter. They had, and now she would pay. Four years in Azkaban, an escape in differed form, two on the lamb and now she would be allowed to rest.

She  _ should _ have been allowed to rest, she had earned it. Instead they buried their head in coals, brought a face to peer at her with charcoal eyes and embers at their pit.

_ Black. _

\---

When Hermione was finally released into her cell it came as such a mercy that she could do nothing more than weep. Her relief was punctuated by hot tears filled with salt more than anything else, a streaking mess that fell down her face in rivulets that burned and cracked. Proper tears and grief were far behind her, the magic she had played with inverting what should have been a valve to express her pain and fitting it instead to burn against her skin. She hadn’t cried in years. Hadn’t thought herself capable of it. There was just the fear and awful numbing sadness, a hollow pit where her heart should have been. 

But here she cried. Here she curled inwards, wrapped her arms around her knees and kept them close enough to her chest that it hurt. Hours passed her by, no sound or motion but the slow drip of the precious liquid to the floor. Eventually there was nothing left for her to cry about. Nothing for her to be sorry over, nothing to fuel this weary despondency. There was just her cell, just her, just naked skin that pressed painfully against the straw lined stone and a gently flickering light provided by a single torch.

Uncertainty took the place of fear, of pain. Confusion won out over terror.

_ She was still alive. _

She hadn’t been sent back to Azkaban.  _ That _ was a precious relief, even if this fate could arguably be described as worse.

Her mind was still pickled from the invasive fingers of her captors; stooges born as Half-blood’s and Pure-blood’s that had the common sense to align themselves with the shifting Ministry despite any prior allegiances. They had all given in, acquiesced to this new reality, allowed themselves to be used as jailors and breakers and interrogators. And they were thorough, so bloody thorough that not a single thought or emotion had been left untouched, no hope or dream had been safe beneath the rocky outcrop of her defences.

All her darkness, all the depths to which she had sunk, exposed to make them squirm when they realized just what she had done to survive, to kill and maim her own enemies. The ones who had looked at her like she was still that silly little girl were forcefully ripped from that assumption. That girl was dead, and now they held a husk that had built itself back up in magic shrouded by inky darkness.

Throughout it all Black had just stared at her with a smile playing across her face and eyes sparkling in interest. If anything she seemed to be more pleased the further it went on, the more her henchmen turned away with blanching faces and stomachs upending. 

The woman just  _ kept  _ **_staring._ **

When it eventually became clear that Hermione had nothing to give them in terms of the remnant Order she had been hauled to her feet by uncaring hands and marched off towards her cell. Their last act, their final humiliation, was her wand. One of the bastards had hold of it, held it up level to her eyes, and snapped it.

Broken like a simple twig, nothing more than trash. Her wand,  _ the _ wand, the only one that she had ever wanted or needed. 

Snapped in two. Hanging, limply as it could, by the thinnest bit of dried heartstring. The pain of that moment had been indescribable. That simple wooden implement had become as much a part of herself as any limb, a living receptacle for her soul and power. 

Gone. Ruined, just like her.

“Muddy.” 

Hermione snapped to attention, broken from her introspection and brought back to this horrid reality. 

“Get up now, no more wallowing. We’ve things to do, can’t lay about all day.”

The voice was dark and heated, just the littlest bit unhinged and invading Hermione’s space as if it were her own. It rang out against the walls and fell back down upon her ears with the lashing effect of a whip cracked just a little too harshly. Hermione turned towards the owner as much as she could while hiding her nakedness from view, fear edging out from all tumult of emotions that ravaged her mind. 

Fear that was well earned and proven out when the woman bound her once again.

\---

“You’ll have to forgive me Muddy, this is the first time I’ve attempted this ritual and I’m told it can be a rather exacting process. Prone to mistakes and all that, if you’ll believe it. Not that a little pain won’t help! From what I’m told you’ve already dabbled in something similar, so it shouldn’t be too far gone from your past experiences. Besides, a little pain never hurt anyone. It just adds to the final result. Now then, stop your crying.”

The words were punctuated by the manacles around her wrists being pulled tighter still, her shoulders giving an uncomfortable amount of distance as pain blasted its way throughout the muscle and twisting bone. She cried out as much as she could, real voice stolen away by a Silencing Charm that felt oddly heavy. She was left with no protest except to move as much as she could and uncomfortably watch as shapes painted in unknown colours blended throughout her vision.

A hand pressed itself flat against her abdomen, its fingers too thin and nails too sharp, blood welling up when they were dragged against her skin. Red lines, drips and rivulets, thin but still somehow unending as she lay there on a slab of  _ something _ with her arms twisted above her head. The hand was hot as it moved and just as persistently strong as she could have feared, urgently attempting to buck it only serving to make Bellatrix press down harder. Rising, falling, Bellatrix above her and grinning steadily through it all.

She looked amused as she bit at her lip, free hand rising from behind her back to reveal a dagger that Hermione knew all too intimately. 

The woman smirked and husked her voice, “Do keep fighting me Pet, I certainly wouldn’t want my little toy to lose all that fire too soon. Besides, there’s no fun if you don’t fight back.”

Hermione drew a rattling breath and fought back the fears and nightmares that had plagued her for years on end. The woman was just as startling as back when she was younger, and if anything the intervening years had her well. Black hair that draped across her shoulders in tight ringlets and curls that seemed never ending, pale skin unmarred by battle or blemish. Eyes that bore straight through Hermione’s soul, so grey and deep they might as well have been a reflection of Azkaban’s stormy skies. 

Terror and beauty all wrapped around one another until there was no defining the edge. Bellatrix just  _ was, _ and Hermione knew just how powerless she was right then and there, no escape in sight and no one to save her. 

Bellatrix tutted to herself before running the tip of the dagger against the bony protrusions of Hermione’s ribs, ticking each off and tutting at every valley in between. There was a moment where she stopped, metal to Hermione’s breastplate and unwavering certainty in her eyes. 

It passed though, faded away as she moved to lay the knife upon a pedestal at her side before replacing it with a shallow, cracked bowl. Bellatrix held it, stared deeply into its contents before releasing the hold she had upon Hermione’s abdomen to dip fingers within it. When she pulled her hand back Hermione could see a thick coating of dark material, gliding and dripping from Bellatrix’s fingers and back towards its receptacle. 

The unease continued, Bellatrix grinning at her as she watched the dark material continue to fall off of her fingers, “What’re you thinking, hmm? What do you think this is? Blood, perhaps? No, not yet. Just honey.” Bellatrix reached a fingertip out to press it against Hermione’s lips, forcing between them until her tongue was forced to taste the sweetness. “See? It’s just honey. The blood comes after.”

Hermione blanched at the words, recoiled as much as she could while Bellatrix stiffened, her finger left in place for an untenable length of time. It withdrew eventually, her eyes turning cruel and sharpened teeth sending ice down Hermione’s spine.

Hermione screamed, voiceless and alone.

\---

She must have passed out. Hermione knew it was the only likely explanation for the changing light that bathed the room, soft rays of fading yellow sliding across the wall. It would have been beautiful were she not still tied down upon a slab, were she still not dealing with Bellatrix and no one else. Slowly she watched as even those faint traces of the sun disappeared beyond the vantage of a window far behind her, sloughing off until nothing remained except torches inset against every wall.

She was still bare as she lay there upon the slab, though it appeared Bellatrix had used the quiet space of her unconsciousness to draw symbols and glyphs against her straining skin. Patterns and whirls in short twists, spirals and looping concentric circles. All of it swirled towards just below her navel, pelvis burning beneath the heated markings.

There was a constant sort of quiet all around her, a space in the madness that left Hermione free to do nothing other than remember better times, to fight back the maddened tears threatening to spill down off her face. She knew better though. This struggle was simply not worth the effort. Even screwing her eyes shut tightly was done in vain, lids opening almost immediately in a fear of leaving the room to its own devices. She could not block it out, she could not forget it. She could only lay there in anticipation and fear while nothing continued to be the something that was happening.

Trapped where she was, held down by iron chains and manacles that seemed heavy as stone. Trapped within what was clearly a ritual room and at the mercy of a madwoman.

“Oh look, you’re awake.” The voice of her tormentor returned full bore, the softer sound of a door closing shut echoing in her wake. “I do so hope that your constitution has improved. It’s not exactly polite to go sleeping when someone is talking to you, you know.”

Hermione didn’t know. Didn’t care. There was nothing  _ to _ know, nothing to do except watch with fear in her eyes as Bellatrix began waving her hand and drawing the torches into a brilliant flame that covered the room in light. 

When she was finished a hand was laid down onto Hermione’s thigh, her fingers and her palm gently sliding upon too warm skin until there was nowhere further for her to go. Hermione squirmed as the fingers began to massage her core, fright jumping into her veins with enough energy to send limbs squirming and jumping. They were leaden still, mostly numb except an uncomfortable tingle that felt exacerbated, increased, upended by the softness of Bellatrix’s attention to the slit between her thighs.

There was no escape from this hold, she was locked down into place and Bellatrix was already moving towards something else with a hand that was flicking into the open air. Steam or smoke coalesced above her palm, the darkened colour sparking until something dropped from brackish air and into her palm. The knife, of course, lay menacingly within her grasp and artful twirls swung the blade back and forth.

Bellatrix grinned unevenly, “Well then. Ready Pet? Let’s get on with it, shall we?”

Hermione screamed again, raw and painful in a way that rattled despite the lack of sound. Voice still stolen away, silenced, locked up inside of her mind to bang against the cages. Bellatrix seemed ready to fill that silence, her voice releasing and turning towards a low chant that thrummed against Hermione’s ears. She felt it first as a gentle pressure, building as it began to  _ push _ and  _ pull _ with air and force. It was slow. It was steady. It was a voice far beyond the crowing of Bellatrix’s, it was a motion that continued over and over, building itself higher with every crest and leaving her chest hollow when it reached the trough.

Her eyes flickered about the space, her body bucking upwards and inadvertently  _ against _ Bellatrix’s continuing motions.

Magic was springing from the action, from the words that fell off Bellatrix’s lips and the glyphs that had been drawn onto Hermione’s skin. She felt it, inescapable, growing and pushing back on her, wrapping her skin in a sheen of sweat and a low heat that fluttered within her core. 

It made a  _ noise _ against her mind.

It spoke in hushed tones, comforting words, a language that she couldn’t -  _ could _ \- understand. It crawled beneath her skin and before too long a feeling had returned to her body, heat coating her all over and spreading as the seconds kept moving.

And by all the Gods did time just keep on  _ dragging. _ Over and over, on and on, it never ended, never relented in its grasp. It just built further while flooding her, filling her as Bellatrix’s fingers were, cooled her veins and sent a slush of ice within her belly that soon, too soon, was batted away by a roaring inferno. Every hair on her body was standing on edge and her mind seemed loosed, broken and shifting. The rhythm of her movements was changing once again, the pain becoming a constant even if she could not pinpoint where it was coming from. Bellatrix would enter her, chant, withdraw and caress the hardened nub of flesh at her apex before starting it all over.

_ Over.  _

**_Over._ **

Hermione was breaking, slowly but surely. That magic was too delectable, too intriguing, too different from what she knew and so much more pleasant despite the spreading pain. She pushed against the hand that teased her, chased it as it left. That magic was becoming visible now, a changing indifference becoming iridescent that coating the spaces between them. IT changed to sparks and spitting lightning that crawled over her skin in cascading waves that built and travelled almost faster than the eye could catch.

That magic was wild and unmanageable, and it wanted  _ in. _

Hermione welcomed it. Gave it her blessing and hoped for more, felt the crack- _ crack- _ **_crack_ ** against her mind, against her soul, Bellatrix’s ministrations so present that she nearly lost it then and there.

She  _ did _ lose sight of Bellatrix’s other hand, the one that gripped her dagger with so much precision and care that it may have well been made of glass. That edge became present again but only just so, too thin and light against the flooding of her mind. The blade pressed itself tight against Hermione’s pelvis, cutting with no issue and cleaning spilling blood. There was an itch in her mind, the mild sensation of  _ more _ heat, all of it subsumed beneath the crawling magic and power that bathed all the rest of her.

The ritual woke. It breathed upon them both as blood fell against Hermione’s side, a piercing eye glaring at them both with malevolence bred for unknowable intent. Hermione saw something far above her, rainbowed and spread, the Sun come up from nowhere and all of it for all of her.

It  _ burned. _

And then it stopped. That kaleidoscope of beauty disappeared, Bellatrix ceased her motions, all of her went  _ cold. _

Hermione mewled her discontent even as something crossed over through the painted lines of sweetness on her body. It was the same as before, different, harsher and so very familiar. It was unwieldy as it forced itself upon her, it  _ pushed _ back against the thin film that separated their differing realities. That film popped, tore, shredded down to nothing at all. It flooded her through every pore and every sense, the momentum building residual heat until she was bursting with  _ Another, _ a  _ Thing. _

A fire sparked to life above her throat, her forehead, a shape of blinding sparks and cracking lightning that spelt a name. Hermione found herself outside, turned around, forced to look down upon herself as brown eyes turned gold with haze filled lenses and mirror finish.

Darkness descended upon them both. All light was gone and yet Bellatrix remained, perfectly illuminated by an unseen source and present in her world. Both of her hands were coated, sticky with blood and honey, slick with Hermione’s wetness. It was lubrication that Bellatrix willingly used, a hand placed atop Hermione’s mound and a thumb flattening against her clit. Two fingers entered her, curled and twitched, coaxed more mewls and driven puffs of breath from Hermione’s overheated throat.

“It’s the last Dæmon of Winter,” Bellatrix crooned, her voice coming from everywhere and nowhere and crashing back down upon Hermione’s sensitive ears. “You’re the perfect little host you know. An enemy still living, one tainted with rot, unencumbered by purpose or direction. Our Lord wishes to spread our Chaos far and wide, and with it we need  _ more. _ You’re mine now, all of you. Both of you.”

Hermione came right then and there, a blush fire spreading across her body, overtaken by whatever this was.

And then she spoke. One word, simple. Quiet even. But  _ she _ had not spoken.  _ She _ had not made that noise,  _ she _ had not wanted to. 

But  _ It _ had.

**_“Yes.”_ **


End file.
